Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice anniversary stamps on sale

A set of Jane Austen stamps has gone on sale to mark the 200th anniversary of her novel Pride And Prejudice.

Letters sent from Hampshire villages Chawton, where Austen lived, and Steventon, where she was born, will also get a special postmark for a week.

Newly commissioned artwork depicting scenes from all six of her novels is featured on the stamps.

A Royal Mail spokesman said the books "contributed immeasurably to British culture over the last two centuries".

Two first-class stamps will have illustrations from Pride And Prejudice and Sense And Sensibility.

Images from Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion make up the six-stamp set.

Illustrator Angela Barrett was commissioned to produce the artwork for the stamps.

The postmarks for letters posted in Chawton, where the 19th Century novelist spent the last eight years of her life, and her birthplace Steventon, near Basingstoke, will feature the Pride And Prejudice quote: "Do anything rather than marry without affection."

Royal Mail stamps spokesman Andrew Hammond said: "New generations continue to fall in love with her work through television and film adaptations, as well as, of course, the books themselves."

He added it was "an honour for Royal Mail to commemorate her work".

Jane Austen was born in Hampshire in 1775 and died, at the age of 41, in 1817 in Winchester.

In 2007, a BBC poll for World Book Day voted Pride and Prejudice as the book most respondents could not live without.